


The crooked pack

by Petra



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: M/M, Psychic Wolves, product placement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:04:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22722985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: What counts as normal for wolves who decline to join the military-industrial complex?
Relationships: Jon Favreau/Jon Lovett, Jon Lovett/Tommy Vietor, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Ronan Farrow/Jon Lovett
Comments: 15
Kudos: 31
Collections: Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia





	The crooked pack

"Yes, but Pundit is an angel," Lovett says in the face of all the evidence. They're killing time, waiting for Jon to show up to a meeting, and it's never a bad time to talk about his wolf.

"Pundit snores," Tommy says. "It's Pundit's fault we have extra soundproofing in the studio."

"You snore, Vietor. And so does Lucca." Lovett makes a face at him. "She's a proud wolf and none of your pressure is going to make her less territorial, or any more ashamed of what her body does when she's sleeping."

"Yeah, Burrow definitely thinks she's been sent from Heaven to help them out. How many couches do we need to go through?" Tommy asks.

"I don't know what counts as normal for wolves who decline to join the military-industrial complex. Besides, it’s not like Lucca’s innocent of inflicting wear and tear on the furniture." Pundit has always been more the jump-up-to-lick-your-face kind of wolf than the kind who wants to tear the enemy's throat out, which is how she got her permanent placement with a former presidential speechwriter who was in the right place at the right time, rather than with a Marine or an officer in the army, where she was supposed to go.

Every now and then the system has its washouts, and they end up sleeping in piles in the offices of small media companies and eating all the leftover Chipotle they can scam from their brothers’ colleagues, to the detriment of the couches at work, the Parachute bed linens at home, and any number of Uber drivers in between. Like Jon and Tommy, Lovett leaves exorbitant tips every single time -- he knows it's important to keep the peace and make sure that people who have to take their service animals in rideshares don't get a bad name -- but he's also had harsh words with Pundit about the times when she's eaten too much to keep down.

_You'd eat it all too_ is her best defense, since he can't exactly argue with that, logically speaking.

He loves her, but they're not good for each other's girlish figures. Pundit is just fine with him getting donuts for breakfast every single day as long as she gets some, too.

When she needs to run, though, that gets Lovett moving. There aren't many wolf parks in LA where they can let Pundit and Leo and Lucca go free, because trellwolves are wolves first in the public eye and companions second. She would no more eat someone's toy poodle than Lovett would, but you try telling that to the Lululemon set when there's a wolf in the dog park. All you'll get are people sweeping up their miniature dogs in their arms and trying to protect them with their bodies.

They haven't seen her playing with the interns to lighten a long day's push, sacked out in a pile with Lucca and Leo, or getting a belly scratch from Emily with her tail wagging like anything. All they think of when they think of wolves are the ads the Marines put out, all stern faces gazing into the middle distance and eager ears perked up at the sound of defending freedom.

The wolves have been a great icebreaker since they founded Crooked Media. Even the brass who think they're upstarts can find a few things to say about wolves they've known and their parentage to Tommy, who's made something of a study of military wolves, and that lets him get his foot in the door with the most unexpected people. Lovett’s had more than his fair share of wolf-related conversations too. Sure, the Lovett or Leave It interview with Mattis had almost nothing to do with the military per se and dealt with the push to have wolves and wolfsiblings more valued in the workforce, considering how many veterans come home with them, but that's not to say it was fluff.

Fluff is mostly what comes out of the couch when someone gets the tiny pack too wound up, not what pervades Lovett's interview style. He may not be Tommy, but he gets the job done.

"I'm not replacing the couch till we finish the next round of tours," Lovett tells Tommy, in case there's any question about that.

He doesn't need to remind Tommy that sometime in that period, Pundit's heat will hit and she might end up shredding even a brand-new couch before they can get her either home or to the Pack Center, especially given that it's illegal to take a female wolf in a rideshare or a cab when she's hormonally influenced.

If she'd fit on a scooter, things would be a lot easier on Lovett, but there are rules about him piloting any vehicle at all when Pundit's in heat, namely reckless endangerment.

Lovett's had thoughts about commandeering the studio when it happens so they don't have to pack the pack across town in a wolf truck and involve the military community in the concerns of purely civilian wolves. They're just thoughts, though, because it would cost them way too much time and be less comfortable in the long run than other options.

Lovett, Jon, and Tommy are shieldbrothers, sure, if you want to be old-fashioned about it, but they're not life partners. They just own a company together and moved to the same coast. They're a very small pack, just like Jon and Lovett were when they worked on the same speeches before there were wolves snoring in their lives, just like Tommy and Jon were when they worked their asses off together. If Jon and Lovett hadn't been up for thirty-six hours perfecting a speech -- not even a speech about wolves -- before the remarks to the breeding facility Obama had visited, they might not have smelled like they belonged to each other, and found wolf cubs on that wild, weird day. Tommy’s Lucca was another fluke, and led to the late-night comedians offering to join the White House communications staff if it came with a wolf. 

Things would be a lot harder without Leo and Lucca. If Pundit and Lovett had to contend with the ex-military every time Pundit got hot under the collar -- well, Lovett doesn't think those guys would stuff him in a recycling bin at the beginning because wolves override that kind of bullshit, but while he's always had respect for the country's veterans, he doesn't want to contend with them in anything resembling a bedroom.

Tommy knows all that, and he knows that Lovett's thing with Ronan is important enough to count as a Thing, while Pundit's thing with Leo that’s sometimes a thing with Lucca is the main Thing in the other case. The wolfbrothers have their own thing, but it's not a Thing. 

"But you will replace the couch, because Lucca didn’t do it this time," Tommy says, like confirming it out loud when they're not taping is worth a damn, or like Lovett's going to start shirking his responsibilities to his wolf and his company.

"Yeah, yeah." Lovett sends a wave of affection at Pundit to apologize for the resentment he's feeling. He splits the cost of the wolf-destroyed furniture with the other culpable parties, but it still adds up to a pretty hefty bill over time.

"Great." Tommy claps his hands. "How's this week's show coming?"

The time for overstated grandstanding is when they're giving plugs, not when they're having an impromptu meeting. "We're hoping to get Bloomberg, but his people have been evasive. It's not close enough to Super Tuesday for his push, it's not far enough from Super Tuesday for people who take him seriously to forget he went on our show, you know how the balance plays out."

There's a tap at the door and then Jon comes in, bringing each of them a drink. "Hey, sorry I'm running late."

"You're forgiven," Lovett tells him and takes a sip of his coffee. "Tommy was just trying to get deets out of me about this week's show, so you came in just in time to co-sign a loan for a new couch instead."

"Already?" Jon asked.

"It's been taking a beating." Tommy clucks his tongue. "It makes me think we need to endorse one of the heavy-duty furniture sellers, if we can get them to sign on, not just civilian-grade stuff."

"We're a civilian-grade company. We don't need Wolf Tuff-with-two-effs shit all over the office," Lovett complains. "I don't give two effs for their stuff." He's gotten the occasional requests from them to run their ads as a "wolf-partnered individual," as the boilerplate goes. They make furniture in any color you want as long as it's camo or black, so he's never tried it.

"It's our budget on the line," Tommy points out. "Their stuff may be ugly but it comes with a guarantee."

"Ugh, don't remind me." Lovett sniffs. "'Survives the pack or your money back.'"

Jon says, "I'd be up for trying one."

"Have you checked their prices recently? You'd swear they get military contractors to cost out their materials. It would cost, like, three couches worth of money to get one butt-ugly thing. And no USB chargers built in, either. Manly men don't need to charge their phones. They just glare at them, and the phones charge themselves."

Jon shrugs. "I'll look into it," he says, which is his way of saying, "I'll figure out a way to talk you into it, even if it means cooking you dinner and showing you a spreadsheet that makes your eyes cross."

Lovett gives up on him and turns to Tommy. "Do you have any big gets to announce?"

"Nothing yet, but who knows what will happen before this week's taping."

They had to set a company policy of only releasing pods on the days they're scheduled at the start, or they'd be going crazy chasing the news cycle even harder than they currently are. Their staff of dozens does enough to keep them all up to the minute as it is.

Sometimes Lovett is distracted from a perfectly normal meeting, or even from Twitter, when Pundit wakes up from her midmorning nap and sticks her head onto his lap under the table. "What's up?" he asks her, scratching behind her ears.

She sends him Leo's scentname, the smell of an electric bug zapper, ozone and menacing only to the tiniest animals. _He started dreaming and woke me up_.

Lovett sends back Pundit's scentname: the way dust fries under hot television lights, the metallic scent of a microphone close enough to catch every gaffe, and fresh printer toner. Someday Lovett will meet Pundit's mother and be able to ask her where a wolf who was presumably serving in the field got to smell that combination of smells. With his luck, though, Pundit is the daughter of one of the high brass's queenwolves, and she's the one bringing dishonor on the family line by failing to serve.

She's much better as an interview partner than she ever would have been on the field of battle. She can disarm people who think they hate wolves with her sad eyes, and for the ones who find wolves impressive, she can put on a good show of being the noble creature they expect her to be genetically.

"Lovett, you with us?" Tommy asks, and he realizes he zoned out talking to Pundit again.

"Yeah, sure. What's next?"

"We've got to look at the scripted bits for tomorrow's pod and do a few fresh ad reads."

"And this time ZipRecruiter wants us to make it through the whole ad without mentioning wolves, for the phobic audience."

"Pfft. The phobic audience doesn't listen to us anyway. Not the ones who know we have wolves in-studio."

"Which is all of them," Tommy allows, "but maybe some of them make an effort for the sake of the things we know, so we might as well pander to them just a little bit. For the ad money."

"That's a terrible reason to do anything, but fine," Lovett agrees, because it's not a hardship to talk about things that aren't Pundit for hours at a time when he needs to. It's just that when people are trying to sell a system for sniffing out the best job candidate in a huge pile, the wolf metaphors come inexorably to mind. "As long as their ad copy doesn't use 'needle in a haystack' for the tenth time, I won't mention Pundit."

"We'll double-check that," Tommy says and makes a note.

"Thanks."

After the meeting, Lovett says, "Hey," to Jon and, as Tommy leaves, he asks, "Are you serious about wanting to try one of the Wolf Tuff couches? I guess we don't really have anything to lose except our homey prints."

"None of which people can see under the wolf fur anyway," Jon points out. "We may as well get an actually durable couch to get covered in paws and hair."

"But they're so utilitarian," Lovett complains.

"But they're so durable, and if we reach out to them we could get them as a sponsor."

"They've been breathing down our necks trying to get a piece of the liberal wolfpartnered airtime," Lovett corrects him. "We don't have to do anything to get them except lower our standards."

"Or raise our standards for couches lasting."

Lovett wrinkles his nose. "If we have to."

Jon says, "It would be a gift to my bottom line."

"As your shieldbrother, I'm going to be the bigger man here and not make a comment about your bottom."

Jon laughs. "Save it for the ad reads."

"Oh, don't worry, I will."


End file.
